Description
Prescribed faster than it was taught
GLP-1 receptor agonists went from diabetes to obesity to cardiovascular medicine in a few years. Prescribing has outrun teaching almost everywhere, and monitoring has outrun neither — most patients on these drugs are having nothing checked beyond weight.
These 392 pages cover the benefit and the gap.
The benefit is real
Cardiovascular outcome data across the trial programme, including in patients without diabetes and the emerging preserved-ejection-fraction signal. Where the effect looks independent of weight loss and where it does not. There is no scepticism here about efficacy — the class works.
What is not being watched
Rapid weight loss is not selective. Lean mass, cardiac muscle included, is lost alongside fat, disproportionately in the older and frailer patients most likely to be prescribed these agents for cardiac reasons. Reduced intake produces deficiencies with direct cardiac consequences — thiamine, magnesium, potassium, iron, vitamin D, B12 — and no major guideline currently specifies a monitoring schedule. The book proposes one, and is clear that it is a proposal rather than a standard.
Practical prescribing
Titration and tolerance. Interaction with heart failure therapy. Discontinuation effects, including weight regain and what it does to the cardiovascular gains. The resistance-exercise and protein conversation that should accompany the prescription and rarely does.
Suits
Cardiologists, general physicians, endocrinologists, family doctors and dietetic staff.
PDF, lifetime access, at CardiologyBooks.com.
